#three-point lighting

Three-point lighting is the most basic lighting technique for film and photography. It consists of a key light, fill light, and back light.

Key Light: This is the main light. It is usually the strongest and has the most influence on the look of the scene. It is placed to one side of the camera/subject so that one side is well lit and the other side has some shadow.

Fill Light: This is the secondary light and is placed on the opposite side of the key light. It is used to fill the shadows created by the key. The fill will usually be softer and less bright than the key.

Romcoms tend to have even lighting with the fill almost as bright as the key. Darker films tend to make the fill less bright, adding more shadows and depth.

The Proposal (2009)

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Back Light: The back light is placed behind the subject and lights it from the rear. It provides definition and subtle highlights around the subject’s outlines. This helps separate the subject from the background and provide a three-dimensional look.

Back light can also be used to the extreme. When the key and/or fill lights are removed, a back light makes a subject silhouetted.

Today was the first real day of media work. As media is my chosen pathway, it's what I'm going to be focusing on as soon as we are finished with our Roundabouts.

One of our tutors in media is Graham, a camera operator with over 30 years experience working on programmes such Horizon, Panorama, and the Jeremy Kyle Show. Graham is a really experienced, professional guy, and today we had our first workshop with him. He explained to us three-point lighting.

Three-point lighting obviously consists of three lights:

The key light is the strongest of the three and provides the main source of light on a subject. The key light is supposed to represent a dominant light source, such as the sun or a light in the room.

The fill light is used to soften and minimize shadows on the subject.

The back light places light around the subject and prevents it from blending in with the background.

This is a diagram that I found online which illustrates how the three lights are set up:

This lighting setup can either be used by itself, or as a base, with other lights added in. 

This workshop took place right in the studio, so Graham took us into the gallery and demonstrated it for us, showing us the effect that each light had on the subject.